That’s not a relevant comparison. You’re comparing war and human lives with social media platforms. I very much care about what happens in war. I don’t very much care when it comes to social media. I’ve opted out and moved onto the Fediverse, and deleted all my old social media accounts. Reddit users get burned over and over but still continue to use the platform.

It’s a fair point given the size of Lemmy World. But if it went poof, most of us (me included) would pick a new server - hopefully one of the more medium sized ones rather than the larger pillars. Beauty of decentralisation.

Grass is much greener here on our new lawns compared to the old Reddit lawns, which switched to AstroTurf.

Okay, so the neighbors are doing something weird at their house? Good for them I guess. But who cares?

Meanwhile we’re here chilling on the Fediverse immune from their harm because we’ve opted out of centralisation by corporations.

backup your NAS to a cloud like backblaze.

Are you encrypting your data before it goes to Backblaze? And if so, are you also testing those encrypted backups?

Bonus meme

Meanwhile, new age Glassholes Flock to their new Meta glasses.

I really want this shower curtain. This is awesome.

Misspelling of “server” in the Title Bar be damned.

Ooh boy, refunds! Yay!

We should make sure to refund all the corporations and businesses - by court order! If we do that, surely it will trickle down this time.

Shrekislove posted some good advice, so I’ll add something here for you to evaluate based on what you said above.

“I hate Google so much… I’m just looking for my blindspots… Im not in tech”

Years ago I went all in and too fast on privacy. I’d recommend some guard rails as getting privacy is a journey. First you need to define what “privacy” is for you. Privacy is a spectrum. Only you can determine it based on your needs and wants, and you can do that by figuring out your threat model.

That old expression of tightening your grip and more things fall out applies here.

Think about your security and privacy. Think about what you’re willing to give up, and think about your relationships with others that can be impacted.

You can get recommendations and learn more about privacy by checking out privacyguides.org.

As for me? I’m basically at the point where I’m fatigued with big tech - especially smartphones. I’m waiting to see when GrapheneOS will reveal what new OEM they are working with, to determine if I’ll get another smartphone when my current one is too old. Else, my plan is to upgrade to a truly dumb 5g phone with hotspot. Then I’ll carry my Linux laptop with me and use that when I need the internet.

Best of luck! Don’t go too fast and evaluate everyone’s suggestions carefully. I don’t recommend just dropping the phone you got and going all in on buying a Pixel and installing GrapheneOS. That’s a drastic action to take suddenly since you’re still getting your feet wet on all this privacy stuff. You can improve privacy on your current phone, and then when you’re comfortable and if you decide you need the benefits of GrapheneOS, then look into upgrading in the future.

“Sweet dreams, Piggy!”

State sponsored surveillance Flock cameras photographed the chat.

What the fuck is a gun going to do to a paranormal entity?

I’ll handle this one! Haven’t you heard of ghost guns? They precisely handle this use case.

Those European leaders missed a golden opportunity to clap back with “Quiet, Piggy!”

Former Catholic, now atheist. In my fundamental years growing up as a Catholic and being a member of our Catholic school and church, we were entirely service based and helped do those things Jesus was all about: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick (hospice, nursing homes), etc. We never crammed our religion down someone’s throats. Today, I still live Christ-like even though I’m not christian.

I’m not in Texas, but one of my favorite videos of Talarico is his sermon to explain the difference between Christianity and Christian Nationalism. This sermon isn’t cramming religion down your throat - it goes through the dangers of Christian Nationalism and presents it in such a digestible manner. It made me angry on behalf of Christians (given that I’m a former one who strived to do good for others and serve my community like Jesus in the bible did) since Trump and his cronies co-opted Christianity.

“James Talarico Delivers Sermon Against Christian Nationalism - October 22nd, 2023”

https://youtu.be/Blph_2RSBno

Duration: 18:46 minutes

Long video, but it’s really good. Video hits harder since it was before Trump was re-elected.

“They have co-opted the Son of God. They’ve turned this humble rabbi into a gun-toting, gay-bashing, science-denying, money-loving, fear-mongering fascist. And it is incumbent upon all Christians to confront it and denounce it.” - James Talarico.

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For now. GrapheneOS is partnering with an OEM that will offer smartphones that meet their hardware security standard. They announced this a while back and are expecting to be able to reveal the new OEM either this year or 2027. The exciting thing is it will be running on modern Snapdragon processors rather than Google Tensor.

Hopefully all the hardware component shortages due to AI won’t have an impact to this OEM’s plans.

Confirmed, my comment above is inaccurate as the Nintendo DS game cartridges do not use NAND; rather, Nintendo DS cartridges use mask ROMs.

Edited my comment above to remove that misinformation. Learned about this stuff years ago and I must have lumped DS into the mix.

Buy your games on GOG and own them forever. You can also buy a cheap, slow as hell external drive and backup your installer files, too. You can still buy games on Steam since most of them don’t have DRM. For now, Steam is also great, but a decade from now they could enshittify.

If you only do console gaming, buy physical cartridges and discs as much as possible. You’ll keep most of the game and can play whenever you want. An example of being able to play “most” of the game applies to games with legacy activation servers, such as Splinter Cell Blacklist and Watch Dogs 1. Most of the game is playable, but anything that requires a connection to that activation servers no longer works.

Finally, scour Craigslist, flea markets, and yard sales to buy old game consoles from before this DRM mess. All those old games still work great. If you buy Wii U, 3DS, and Switch 1, make sure to boot your console and every single game at least once every few years. Yes, every single one of your games. Due to NAND volatility, this will protect your games and console (Wii U) from NAND failure and increase longevity.

Edit: removed Nintendo DS from the list I provided. Nintendo DS does not use NAND; rather, the DS uses mask ROMs which does not have the limitation of NAND volatility.

Verified. I was able to use this to download an age restricted video just now.